Author Archive


Posted on November 24, 2010 - by

Stories that didn’t make it into the article

Hello everyone,

I had a great time learning about my people’s bilingual Thanksgiving drama—at least I know I’m not the only one!! Sadly the space FoxNewsLatino.com allotted me was limited, and I wanted to share more of the wonderful stories people sent me from across the country. Scroll down here for more touching and hilarious tales of culture clash and confusion on Turkey Day!!!

Michelle

Luis Rodriguez, 27, Chicano Studies Student from Inglewood, California.

The first thing I thought of was how my cousin and I would always hang out during Turkey dinner when I was little and as a teenager. We always communicated in English, and some of the foods were only eaten by the second- generation people in the room (the ones who could pronounce the food like stuffing, mashed potatoes, mac n cheese). The English didn’t cause us to refrain from speaking with the older (Spanish-speaking) people, but the language did reinforce the already existing cultural differences between us.”

You know it is also interesting how gender roles were recreated in the kitchen… the second generation women would take over half the kitchen (oven) for the turkey while the first-generation would take over the stove/flame part of the stove for mole and tortillas and tamales.

Sometimes, people would try to break through the cultural boundaries. Specifically, the women who made the Mexican traditional dishes (mole and tamales) tried communicating with the women who made the thanksgiving style dishes (i.e. turkey, mashed potatoes, etc.)

The gender roles were definitely reinforced despite the change in available foods.  Women made the food despite their individual level of assimilation.

Also, what was interesting was that the traditional Mexican dishes were made over open flames (mole and tamales) while traditional thanksgiving dishes were made in the stove (i.e. turkey, candied yams, ham) so the women were able to communicate while they cooked.

Hello. My name is Della Gutierrez.  I am a fellow Tejana.  I have found that my being and upbringing has both intimidated and angered many a FLUENT Spanish-speaking person.  Being that I am from the southwestern part of the U.S.,  I was brought up w/a limited Spanish vocabulary.  In speaking my dialect of Spanish, I have had been ridiculed, criticized, and harshly corrected by being asked: “What kind of Mexican are you?” To this I reply: ” I am a Tejana, like my mother and her mother before her.” I say this with pride, because I know where I came from and know where I am going!

Margarita Valdivieso, mother of a 15 and 16 year old, on her first Thanksgiving in 2001:

My name is Margarita. Eight years ago I volunteered at my child’s school to learn English. Thanksgiving day was coming and they invited all the school staff to celebrate a Thanksgiving lunch. Well, in Mexico we have a “good manners tradition,” You never arrive at someone’s houses empty-handed. I made pumpkin candy (pumpkin with Piloncillo syrup) and I went to the lunch room. I put my dish on the big table, and three African American teachers asked me, “What is that?”  I answer Mexican Pumpkin Desert, and one of them said “Oh My Gosh! Get out of here!” I felt so bad; I turned around and sneaked out quickly. Next day one of the Hispanic teachers asked me why I left the party so soon. I explain to her what happened and she began to laugh. She told me, “Chica it’s an expression!” I’m still having trouble with my English, but at least no one kicks me out with an expression.

Nora Diaz, 43, a television programmer and co-founder of Casa Latina, said

A Very Diaz Thanksgiving in Norwood, NJ:

Growing up, our Thanksgiving table was a barrage of English and Spanish conversations flying in every direction across a very packed dining room table.  My Spanish dominant mother always took it in stride – “que dios la bendiga”.  My mother understood enough English to know what was being said but she stuck to the Spanish conversations. My Cuban grandmother, that’s another story. She would become exasperated and finally yell out – “Hablen en Esponol!!” We would comply – for about two minutes- and then it was back to the bilingual free-for-all.  This went on for, well, years. I could easily switch back and forth but it was much more difficult for my brothers and some of my cousins(the boys that is) to converse in Spanish.  To be honest, their attempts were comical, and sometimes painful.  But they did try – for those two minutes.

In the end we all enjoyed – and still wax nostalgic about – those days.  The thought of having one of those Thanksgivings back – including today’s new additions to the family- makes me cry. My beloved grandmothers – both of who lived with us – and champion of a mother are no longer with us.  And these days, due to intermarriage with Gringos, and the difficulty of keeping the language alive in those circumstances – it’s mostly English.  Though, when it is our year to have Thanksgiving together, my aunt – now the matriarch – still keep us on our Spanish speaking toes.  It’s still, “pasa me otra empanada, por favor” or “estas habichuelas están deliciosas”.  While the language may be fading for some in our family, we will never give up rice and beans with our Thanksgiving meal.  And yes, we eat stuffing too. You can never have too many sides on Thanksgiving can you?

Nora

Sylvia Melendez-Klinger, writing from Chicago

I have an American husband who doesn’t understand much of what my loud family is saying in Spanish.  Also, he can hardly understand why my family do so many crazy adventures like out of the blue deciding to get on the car and start driving from Miami to Chicago to come visit us.


Posted on November 24, 2010 - by

My article is on FoxNewsLatino.com!!

Hi  everyone…My article on Thanksgiving Language Wars is live http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2010/11/23/spanish-english-latino-family-gatherings-language-conundrum/


Posted on November 12, 2010 - by

A New Blogging Endeavor

Michelle will now be a regular blogger on SmartAuthorSites.com. There, she will discuss her experiences as a writer, the ups and downs of marketing her books, and more. Visit www.SmartAuthorSites.com/authorsblog to follow Michelle’s posts!


Posted on November 10, 2010 - by

The perils and pleasures of writing every day

There’s nothing more intimidating than the blank page. That’s why the promotional emails infuriated me. “Write a novel in one month!!”
“Yeah, right,” I thought. You can file that one in my spam folder, right under “Lose 30 pounds in 10 weeks” and “Earn $60 an hour, without having to leave your house!” I haven’t been able to even write three chapters I can commit to in the past three years. How am I going to write a novel in one month?
But when I saw an author friend at a party who told me he was going to try it, excited at the possibility of belting out a few thousand words a day, no matter what, I have to admit I felt the envy burn. Why haven’t I made any progress on my novel in the past four years? Why do I always get excited and motivated to write for a few weeks, only to abandon the whole thing later in despair over the lack of, shall we say, magic in my words? How do you make a story magical, anyway? (You’re starting to see why I don’t get anywhere).
So, refusing to over-think yet another decision, I decided to do it. I’m trying NaNoWrimo, the National Novel Writing Month project, in which, yes, an author attempts to write a draft of a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. Here’s how it’s going so far: For an hour or so every day, I write complete nonsense. I just sketch out ideas for a scene, anything that characters could possibly do that would turn me on.
It’s excruciating to watch my beloved characters suffer flat prose, along with predictable, or even worse, outlandish plotlines, which I spew on the page just for the sake of my own entertainment. But I’ve just kept writing anyway. I need to get those first 700 words, even if they don’t make sense.
Then, later, after the ideas have percolated in my addled mind for a few hours, I find a quiet time, usually after I’ve attempted to go to sleep (hello, insomnia), and I try again. Sometimes I get a good line or two in. Sometimes the ideas take hold and even yield a decent scene.
One great thing about the daily obligation: it’s forced me to focus. In down times (on the subway, or while waiting in line for something), I find my mind wandering to my story, and how I could word something in the next scene. I’m not sure about the result will be, once the 30 days are over. Will it all hold together, once I read it as a first draft? Will I stay motivated in December? I’m not sure. But I will say this: It’s nice to put that awful self-doubt to bed for a while, and to just keep moving.
Has anyone else signed on to the NaNoWrimo challenge? If so, how’s it going? What has your writing process been like?


Posted on March 9, 2010 - by

Why Cinco de Mayo is more than just a frat-boy tequila fest for me this year.

“Everybody get out of the car, now!” the officer screamed. His face was red, his eyes bulging. Or, at least, that’s how I remember it.

It was the way an officer’s face looks in the movies when he finally catches up with kidnapper, or drug dealer, or whichever evil suspect he’s been racing through red lights, sirens blasting, traffic-defying, to follow, so he can force a dramatic showdown on the shoulder of the road. On the big screen,  the scene usually unfolds on the crowded highway of a major metropolis. By the time the hard-pressed cop gets out of the car he is wild-eyed, furious, barely able to contain the beat-down the good-for-nothing, high-speeding criminal clearly deserves.

Only the driver in this case wasn’t a suspected robber, or an escaping convict, or even shameless speed racer trying to get away with a 90-mile-an-hour-clip. This time the perpetrator was Rick,  my then- 16-year-old older brother.  We lived in Carpentersville, Illinois, a good 45 miles out of Chicago, and we were headed to the city together for the first time without an adult. My brother didn’t have time to think much about how fast he was going or even what route to take. My mother worked the night shift at a Mexican restaurant at the time, so there was no one to ask. All we knew was that my younger brother, Dan, was sick, in severe pain, and we needed to get the special hospital he went to in  the city,  fast. So we all piled into Rick’s recently purchased  1980s Oldsmobile, haphazardly throwing Dan’s wheelchair into the trunk and going, before we even had a chance to call our mother, before we even knew what we were doing. We didn’t get very far. About five miles away from our house, the sirens started, and the officer pulled us over. We didn’t have much experience with the police. My brother was an honor’s student (and now has a PhD); I was a nerdy good girl (at the time). I can remember us scrambling, all talking at once, two flustered teenagers and a kid. All I remember is the officer screaming for us to get out and barely listening as we explained that Dan couldn’t get out, or even move, because he couldn’t walk. And then I remember going to station. And waiting for a half and hour in the car with my crying, confused, 10-year-old brother, who just kept saying, why do we have to wait? Why can’t we just go?

An everyday reminder
At the time, I didn’t connect what happened to our being Mexican American. After all, Rick didn’t say much when he finally came out of the station, except that he didn’t want to talk about it. I just thought it had something to with the invisible stain that seem to surround us. No one ever seemed happy to see us, when we went to the post office, when we went to the mall, when we went anywhere. I was born in Chicago, I didn’t even consider my half-Mexican heritage to be significant until I got to college. And yet, being stopped, and the disgusted look that police officer gave us, has stayed with me for years. It made me believe that it wasn’t just the rich, white kids at school who considered me second class citizen, it was also the police. It made me think, “It’s going to be everybody. You’ll never fit in.”  No matter how much I tried to forget about the looks I received, the memories of that day have made me think twice and have often made me doubt myself. Now that there’s a new law set to take effect in Arizona, legitimizing the questioning of people based on their resemblance to an illegal immigrant, it makes me think of all the kids in the cars, who will see their parents, their families and their friends questioned, regardless of where they were born. Will they now wonder, “Why are we the bad guys?”

This time I want to celebrate
In the past, I saw Cinco de Mayo as a joke.  I either rolled my eyes at my friend’s dancing sombrero email invitations and hit delete or used it as an excuse to have too many margaritas, just like everyone else. But this year, especially, I’m considering it a chance to celebrate more then the expulsion of  French “emperor” Maxmillian from the state of Puebla. I’m thinking that I, along with all the other kids in the cars, could use a reason to feel positive about having brown skin and family from “the other side.” Even if it just involves having a cold drink on a patio listening to Mariachis. Even if it just involves sitting at a table with family, thinking of a reason to be proud.